Poland 1980: Lessons still valid for the struggles of the world proletariat

In
Poland, twenty years ago, in the summer of 1980, there began the
most important movement of the world proletariat’s struggle
since the end of the revolutionary wave, which broke out during
World War I and continued until the beginning of the 1920s. In
today’s conditions, when the dominant ideology dismisses the
idea that the working class even exists, let alone that it can act
as a force in defence of its interests, it is essential for
revolutionary organisations to remind workers of the most
extensive outbreak of working class struggle for almost 80 years.

For
younger workers, the events of Poland 1980-81 could well come as a
revelation of a recent past where the working class clearly
demonstrated that it was a force to be reckoned with in capitalist
society. For older workers who have, possibly, become more
sceptical, a reminder of the working class’ potential power
will act as an antidote to today’s poisonous lies about
globalisation, the wonders of the ‘new economy’ and the
so-called end of the class struggle.

The
struggles in Poland 1980 were rich in lessons for the world
proletariat, and we will return to some of them at the end of this
article. But one which imposed itself forcefully at the time, and
which today has been completely hidden by the bourgeoisie’s
ideological campaigns, is that the workers’ struggles in the
so-called “socialist” countries were fundamentally the
same as those of the workers in the openly capitalist western
countries. In this sense, they demonstrated clearly that the
working class was exploited in the Eastern bloc, just as it was in
the other capitalist countries. This came down to saying that from the
workers’ point of view, “real socialism” was really
capitalism. In fact, this lesson was not really new.
Revolutionaries had not waited until 1980 to identify the
capitalist nature of the self-proclaimed socialist countries. For
decades, even before the formation of the “people’s
democracies”, they had clearly said that the so-called
“socialist fatherland” dear to the Stalinists was
nothing other
than an imperialist and capitalist country, where the workers were
subjected to a ferocious exploitation to the profit of a bourgeois
class recruited in the apparatus of the “communist”
party. They had thus not been surprised in 1953 when the workers
of East Berlin rose up against the German “socialist”
regime, nor in 1956 when the workers of Poland, and above all
Hungary, rose against the “socialist” state, in Hungary
going as far as organising workers’ councils before being
massacred by the tanks of the “Red” Army. In reality,
the struggles in Poland 1980 had been prepared by a whole series
of workers’ struggles, which we will go back to briefly here.

In
June 1956 there were a series of strikes in Poland, which
culminated in an insurrectional strike in Poznan that was put down
by the army. When there were further strikes, demonstrations and
clashes with the police in many parts of the country in October,
the Polish state could no longer rely on brute repression alone.
It was the nomination of the new “reformist” leadership
of Gomulka that allowed the ruling class to control the situation
with a nationalist strategy that prevented any link being forged
with the struggle then going on in Hungary.

In
the winter of 1970-71 workers responded massively to price rises
of 30% and more. Alongside strikes there were clashes with the
security forces and attacks on Stalinist party headquarters.
Despite the state’s repression the government were outflanked
by the extent of the workers’ movement and the price rises
were withdrawn. During the strikes Gomulka had been replaced by
Gierek, but without this diverting the course of the workers’
struggles.

In
June 1976, in response to the first price rises since 1970, there
were strikes and clashes with the security forces. The price rises
were withdrawn, but then the repression of the state swung into
operation with mass dismissals and hundreds of workers arrested.

With
the experience of such struggles behind them, it was not
surprising that workers revealed a remarkable understanding of the
needs and means of their struggle when they embarked on the
movement of 1980.

To
get an idea of why the strikes in Poland were such an inspiration
at the time, why the ICC immediately produced an international
leaflet on the lessons of the movement, and why it is an
experience of the working class that still cries out for attention
two decades later, it is necessary to give an account of what
happened. What follows is partly based on an article that appeared
inInternational
Review no.23 (although that
issue should not be particularly singled out, as every Review
from 23-29 is rich in the lessons of the movement).

“On
1 July 1980, after a major increase in meat prices[up to 60%], strikes broke out at Ursus (suburb of
Warsaw) in the tractor plant which was at the heart of the
confrontation with the authorities in 1976 and in Tczew[at a car component factory] in the Gdansk region[and at a paint factory and petrochemical plant in Wloclawek].
In Ursus the workers organised general assemblies, drew up a list
of demands, elected a strike committee. They resisted the threat
of firings and repression and carried on work stoppages throughout
the following period to support the movement. Between 3-10 July
agitation spread within Warsaw (electrical supplies factories,
printers), to the aircraft factory at Swi, to the aircraft factory at Swidnick,[20,000 workers at]the car plant in Zeran; to Lodz, to
Gdansk. Workers formed strike committees, their demands dealt with
wage increases and the cancellation of the price rises. The
government granted wage increases: 10% on average, sometimes as
high as 20%; often granted preferentially to strikers in order to
calm the movement.

“In
mid-July the strike hit Lublin. Railroad workers, transport
workers and finally all industries in the city stopped work. Their
demands: free elections to the unions, a guarantee of safety for
the strikers, keep the police out of the factories, wage
increases.[Troops were
called in to maintain food supplies to the city.]

“Work
started again in some regions but strikes broke out in others.
Krasnik, the Skolawa Wola steel mills[employing 30,000 workers], the city of Chelm (near the
Russian border),[Ostrow-Wielkopolski, 20,000 workers at a helicopter factory in]
Wroclaw, were reported to be affected ... [among
over 100]strikes in the month of July. Department K1 of
the shipyards at Gdansk had a work stoppage; also the steel
complex a Huta-Warsaw. Everywhere the authorities gave in and
granted wage increases. According to the Financial Times the
government established a fund of 4 billion zlotys in July to pay
these increases. Official agencies were instructed to make ‘good
meat’ immediately available in factories where work stoppages
threatened. Towards the end of July the movement seemed to recede;
the government thought it had stopped the movement by negotiating
factory by factory. It was mistaken.

“The
explosion was merely incubating as the one-week strike of Warsaw’s
dustmen at the beginning of August showed. On 14 August, the
firing of a militant of the free trade union movement, a worker
known for his combativity and sincerity, provoked the outbreak of a
strike[by 17,000 workers]at
the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk. The general assembly drew up a list
of eleven demands; proposals were listened to, discussed and voted
upon. The assembly decided to elect a strike committee mandated on
the basis of the demands which included: the reinstatement of
fired workers, increases in family allowances, wage increases of
2000 zlotys (average wage: 3000-4500 zlotys a month), the
dissolution of the official unions, suppression of the privileges
of the police and bureaucracy, the building of a monument to the
memory of the workers killed by the militia in 1970, the immediate
publication of truthful information about the strike. The
management gave in to the reinstatement of Anna Walentynowicz and
Lech Walesa and on the construction of the monument. The strike
committee gave an account of its mandate to the workers in the
afternoon and informed them of the management’s position. The
assembly decided to form a workers’ militia; all alcohol was
confiscated. A second round of negotiations with the management
began. The workers took over the loud speaker system so that
negotiations would be open for all to hear. Soon they developed a
system whereby workers outside could be heard by the negotiators
inside. Workers seized the microphone and made their voices heard.
Throughout the greater part of the strike and up until the last
days before the signing of the compromise thousands of workers
intervened from outside to exhort, to approve, or to reject the
strike committee’s decisions. All the workers who had been
fired since 1970 could return to the shipyards. The management
granted wage increases and guaranteed the safety of the strikers.

“On
15 August a general strike[of more than 50,000 workers]paralysed the Gdansk
region. The Paris Commune shipyard at Gdynia came out. The workers
occupied the shipyards and were granted an immediate increase of
2100 zlotys. They refused to go back to work, saying that ‘Gdansk
must also win’. The movement at Gdansk fluctuated in a moment
of hesitation: the shop floor delegates hesitated to go any
further and seemed to want to accept the management’s
proposals. Workers from other places in Gdansk and from Gdynia
convinced the assembly of workers occupying the shipyard to
maintain solidarity with them. There was a call for a new election
of delegates who would be better able to express the general will.
The workers from different plants in the region formed an
inter-factory committee[the
MKS]during the night of 15 August and elaborated
twenty-one demands.

“The
strike committee then had 400 members, two representatives per
factory; at the height of the movement there were between 800 and
1000 members. Delegations went back and forth from their factories
to the central strike committee, sometimes using cassettes to
record the discussions. Strike committees in each factory took
care of any specific demands, the whole was co-ordinated by the
central strike committee. The strike committee of the Lenin
shipyards had twelve members, one per shop, elected by a show of
hands after discussion. Two were sent to the central inter-factory
strike committee and reported back twice a day.

“On
16 August all telephone communication with Gdansk was cut off by
the government. The central strike committee elected a presidium
where the partisans of ‘free trade unions’ and
dissidents predominated. The twenty-one demands settled upon on 16
August began with a call for free and independent unions and the
right to strike. What had been point two in the eleven demands
went to seventh place: the 2000 zloty increase for everyone”.

[On
17 August Gdansk local radio reported that “the climate of
discussion in certain plants has become alarming.”]

“By
18 August seventy-five enterprises were paralysed in the
Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot region. There were about 100,000 strikers.
There were movements in Szczecin, and at Tarnow, eight kilometres
south of Krakow. The strike committee organised the food supply;
power stations and food factories operated by request of the
strike committee. The negotiations having become bogged down, the
government refused to talk with the inter-factory committee. In
the following days new strikes at Elblag, at Tczew, in Kolobrzeg
and other cities broke out. On 20 August it was estimated that
300,000 workers were on strike[including 120,000 in the Gdansk area in more than 250 plants. By
22 August more than 150,000 workers in the Gdansk area, and 30,000
in Szczecin, were on strike]. The newspaper of the Lenin
shipyards, Solidarnosc, came out daily; printing workers helped to
put out leaflets and publications.
[Stalinist publications spoke of “a danger of permanent
social and political destabilisation”.]

“On
26 August workers reacted with caution to the government’s
promises and remained indifferent to[Stalinist Party leader] Gierek’s speeches. They
refused to negotiate until telephone communications were
re-established.

“On
27 August safe conduct passes for travel to Gdansk issued by
sources in the Warsaw government were granted to dissidents so
that they could go to the strikers as ‘experts’ and calm
this upside down world. The government agreed to negotiate with
the presidium of the central strike committee and recognised the
right to strike. The telephone lines were re-established. Parallel
negotiations began at Szczecin near the border with East Germany.
Cardinal Wysynski called for an end to the strike; parts of the
speech were shown on TV. The strikers sent out delegations to the
rest of the country for solidarity.

“On
28 August the strikes spread further. They affected the copper and
coal mines of Silesia where workers have the highest standard of
living in Poland. The miners, even before discussing the strike
and agreeing on precise demands declared that they would stop work
immediately ‘if the authorities touch Gdansk’. They went
on strike for ‘the demands of Gdansk’. Thirty factories
were on strike at Wroclaw, in Poznan (the factories where the
movement began in 1956), in the steel mills of Nova-Huta and at
Rzeszois. Inter-factory committees formed in various regions.
Ursus sent delegates to Gdansk. At the heart of the generalisation
Walesa declared: ‘We do not want the strikes to spread
because they will push the country to the point of collapse. We
need calm to conduct the negotiations’. The negotiations
between the presidium and the government became private; the
loudspeaker system increasingly began to break down at the
shipyards. On 29 August the discussions and the presidium came to
a compromise: the workers will be given ‘free trade unions’
if they accept 1. the leading role of the party; 2. the need to
support the Polish state and the Warsaw Pact; 3. that the unions
play no political role.

“The
agreement was signed on 31 August at Szczecin and at Gdansk. The
government recognised the ‘self-managed’ unions; as its
spokesman said ‘the nation and the state need a
well-organised and conscious working class’. Two days later,
fifteen members of the presidium resigned from their workplaces
and became officials of the new unions. Afterwards they were soon
obliged to nuance their position because it was announced that
they would receive salaries of 8000 zlotys. This information was
later denied because of workers’ discontent.

“It
took several days to get these agreements signed. Statements from
workers at Gdansk showom
workers at Gdansk show them to have been morose, suspicious and
disappointed. Some workers on hearing that the agreements gave
them only half of the increase they had already obtained by 16
August shouted ‘Walesa, you sold us out’. Many workers
did not agree with the point recognising the role of the Party and
the state.

“The
strike in the coal mines of Upper Silesia and in the copper mines
whose aim was to ensure that the Gdansk agreement would apply to
the entire country lasted until 3 September. Throughout September
strikes continued: in Kielce, at Bialystok among the cotton
workers, in textiles, in the salt mines of Silesia, in the
transport services of Katowice”.
By mid October 1980 it was estimated that strikes had occurred in
more than 4800 enterprises throughout Poland.

Although
the mass strike had its most dramatic expressions in August 1980,
the working class kept the initiative against the first
incoherent responses of the Polish bourgeoisie for some months,
into early 1981. Despite the agreements drawn up in Gdansk,
workers’ struggles continued, with occupations, strikes and
demonstrations. Workers’ demands broadened, with economic
demands widening in scope and depth, and political demands
becoming increasingly more radical. In November 1980, for example,
there were, in actions centred on the Warsaw area, demands for
control over police, army, security police and public prosecutors.
Such demands, for limitations on the repressive apparatus of a
capitalist government, would not be tolerated anywhere in the
world, as it puts into question the very force that guarantees the
bourgeoisie’s dictatorship.

At
the economic level, there were occupations of government offices
in protest at meat shortages. Elsewhere there were strikes and
protests about the meat ration allowed over the Christmas period.
Solidarnosc was explicitly against these actions as it had for
some time been campaigning for the introduction of meat rationing.

Faced
with these struggles the ruling class in Poland had been inept in
its response. Because of the extent of the workers’ movement
it was not initially able to risk resorting to direct repression.
This did not mean that the threat of repression was not used
constantly by Solidarnosc as grounds for discontinuing the
struggle. The threat was not only from the Polish state but also
from the forces of Russian imperialism. They were rightly
concerned about the possibility of the movement inspiring
struggles in neighbouring countries. The threat of intervention
took a concrete form when, in November 1980, there were reports of
concentrations of Warsaw Pact forces gathering on the Polish
borders. Although leading figures in the US and western Europe
issued the usual warnings against Russia intervening in Poland, as
it had done in Hungary in 56 and Czechoslovakia in 68, these were
empty words. Joseph Luns, the then Secretary-General of NATO, had
already said, in October 1980, that the West was unlikely to make
any
military retaliation for a Russian invasion. When it came to class
struggle on the scale undertaken by the workers in Poland the
imperialist enemies had no real differences in wanting social
order resumed and workers’ struggles crushed. In reality,
these Western warnings had a very definite objective: they aimed
to frighten the Polish of workers with the threat of intervention
by Russian tanks. They knew what had happened in Hungary in 1956,
when these tanks had left thousands dead. Nonetheless, the
struggles continued.

In
January 1981, when Solidarnosc were discussing Saturday working
with the government, on the 10th, three million people failed to
turn up for work and heavy industry came to a standstill. Lech
Walesa appealed for there to be no confrontation with the
government.

In
January and February 1981 there were strikes demanding the removal
of corrupt officials. The southern region around Bielsko-Biala was
paralysed by a prolonged general strike involving 200,000 workers
in ike involving 200,000 workers
in some 120 enterprises. There were strikes in Bydgoszcz, Gdansk,
Czestochowa, Kutno, Poznan, Legnica, Kielce. A leading figure in
Solidarnosc said “we
want to stop these anti-corruption strikes, Otherwise the whole
country would have to go on strike”.
On February 9th, in Jelenia Gora (in western Poland)
there was a general strike involving 300,000 workers in 450
enterprises demanding that a government sanatorium reserved for
bureaucrats be turned over to the local hospital. There were
further actions in Kalisz, Suwalki, Katowice, Radom, Nowy Sacz,
Szczecin and Lublin - these happened after Jaruzelski has been
appointed as Prime Minister and Solidarnosc had responded
enthusiastically to his proposal for a 90-day period of restraint
from industrial action.

The
replacement of Kania by Jaruzelski in February 81, and the
previous replacement of Gierek by Kania in September 1980 were
important re-orientations by the Polish bourgeoisie, but they did
not, in themselves, deflect workers’ struggles. They had seen
Gomulka come and go, and knew that a change at the top would not
change the policies of the state.

In
March there was the threat of a national general strike in
response to police violence in Bydgoszcz. In the end this was
called off by Solidarnosc after a deal with the government. The
union accepted that “there was some justification for police
interference in Bydgoszcz because of a climate of tension in the
city.” In the period following Bydgoszcz seven joint
commissions were set up to officially institutionalise
government-Solidarnosc collaboration.

However,
the struggles had not finished. In mid-July 1981 fuel and price
rises of up to 400% were announced, as well as cuts in the meat
rations for August and September. Strikes and hunger marches
reappeared. Solidarnosc called for an end to the protests. Many
other issues were also taken up - corruption, repression, as well
as rationing. By late September two thirds of Poland’s
provinces were affected. The strike wave continued developing into
mid October 81.

Although
the government’s summer announcements were clearly
threatening, it was not until 13th
December 1981 that the clamp down of military rule was undertaken.
The police state had 300,000 troops and 100,000 police - but it
was 17 months after the start of the movement before the Polish
ruling class felt confident that it could physically attack
workers’ strikes, occupations and demonstrations. This
confidence came from its knowledge of the work that Solidarnosc
had done in the gradual undermining of the ability of the working
class to struggle.

The
strength of the movement lay in the fact that workers took the
struggle into their own hands and rapidly went beyond the confines
of particular enterprises. Extending struggles beyond individual
factories, holding general assemblies and ensuring that delegates
could be recalled at a delegates
could be recalled at any moment, all this contributed to the power
of the movement. Partly this can be attributed to the fact that
workers had no confidence in the official trade unions - which
were identified as corrupt state organs. However, while this
contributed to the strength of the movement, it also laid workers
wide open to propaganda about ‘free’ or ‘independent’
trade unions.

Various
dissident groups had for years put forward the idea of ‘free’
trade unions, as an alternative to those which were seen as part
of the state. Such ideas came to the fore particularly at times of
intense workers’ struggle. August 1980 was no exception.
Right from the start, when workers were struggling against attacks
on their living and working conditions, there were voices
insisting on the need for ‘independent’ trade unions.

The
actions of Solidarnosc in 1980 and 1981 demonstrated that, even
when formally separated from the capitalist state, new unions,
started from scratch, with millions of determined members and
enjoying the confidence of the working class, act the same as
official, bureaucratic state unions. As with unions everywhere
else in the world, Solidarnosc (and the demands for ‘free
trade unions’ that preceded its foundation) acted to sabotage
struggles, demobilise and discourage workers and divert their
discontent into the dead-ends of ‘self-management’,
defence of the national economy and defence of the unions rather
than workers’ interests. This happens, not because of ‘bad
leaders’ such as Walesa, the influence of the Church or a
lack of democratic structures, but because of the very nature of
unionism. Permanent organisations cannot be maintained in an epoch
where reforms are no longer possible, where the state tends to
incorporate the whole of society, and where unions can only be
instruments for defending the national
economy.

In
Poland, even at the height of the strikes, when workers were
organising themselves, extending their struggles, holding
assemblies, electing delegates and creating inter-factory
committees to co-ordinate and make their actions more effective,
there was already a movement that insisted on the need for new
unions. As our account of the events shows, one of the first blows
against the movement was the transformation of the inter-factory
committees into the initial structure of Solidarnosc.

There
was much suspicion of the actions of such as Walesa and the
‘moderate’ leadership, but the work of Solidarnosc was
not accomplished by a handful of ‘compromising’
celebrities, but by the union structure as a whole. Certainly,
Walesa was an important figure, and acknowledged by the
bourgeoisie internationally. The award of the Nobel peace prize,
and his subsequent elevation to the Polish presidency were
undoubtedly in continuity with his activities in 1980-81. But it
should also be remembered that he had once been a respected
militant, who had, for example, been a leading figure in the
struggles of 1970. This respect meant that his voice had a
particular weight with workers, as a proven ‘opponent’
of the Polish state. By the summer of 1980 this ‘opposition’
was 80 this ‘opposition’
was a thing of the past. Right from the beginning of the movement
he was to be found actively discouraging workers from striking.
This started in Gdansk, then he went on to ‘negotiations’
with the authorities on the best way to sabotage workers’
struggles,
and, eventually, took the form of rushing round the whole country,
often in an army helicopter, urging workers, at every opportunity,
to abandon their strikes.

Walesa
not only relied on his past reputation, but gave new reasons for
the suppression of the struggle. “Society
wants order now. We have to learn to negotiate rather than
strike”. Workers had to
stop their struggles so that Solidarnosc could negotiate. The
framework of the national economy was clear as “We
are Poles first and trade unionists second”.

The
role of Solidarnosc became more and more openly one of partnership
with the government, particularly after it averted the threat of a
general strike in March 1981. In August 81 there was a
particularly good example, when Solidarnosc was trying to persuade
workers to give up eight free Saturdays to help out the
crisis-ridden economy. As an angry worker told representatives of
Solidarnosc’s National Commission “You
dare to call on people to work their free Saturdays because the
government has to be propped up? But who says we have to prop it
up?”.

But
Solidarnosc did not only issue direct appeals for order. A typical
leaflet, from Szczecin Solidarnosc, started by saying that:

“Solidarnosc
means:

the
way to get the country back on its feet

social
calm and stability

maintenance of standards and good organisation”,

but
then went on to speak of “the
battle for decent living standards”.
This showed the two faces of Solidarnosc, as a force for social
order, but also posing as the defender of workers’ interests.
The two aspects of the union’s activity were mutually
dependent. By claiming to have the interests of workers at heart
they hoped that their appeals for order would have credibility.
Many union activists who denounced Walesa’s ‘betrayals’
would still rush to the defence of Solidarnosc itself. In February
1981, following a period where many strikes were out of the
control of Solidarnosc, the leadership issued a statement
insisting on the need for a united union as its splintering “would
herald a period of uncontrolled social conflict”. Such an
appeal was a reminder that Solidarnosc would only function
effectively for Polish capitalism so long as it posed as the
defender of workers’ interests.

This
role for Solidarnosc was recognised internationally, as unions
from the West gave advice on how unions function within the
framework of the national economy. To build up Solidarnosc western
unions did not restrict themselves to verbal assistance,
substantial financial support was provided by a number of union
federations, in particular from those pillars of social
responsibilityse pillars of social
responsibility in the US and the UK, the AFL-CIO and the TUC.
Internationally capitalism left nothing to chance.

The
struggles of 1980-81 were enriched by the previous experience of
the working class in Poland. However, they were not an isolated
‘Polish’ expression of the class struggle, being the
culmination of an international wave of struggles from 1978 to
1981. Miners in the US in 1978, the public sector in Britain in
1978-79, French steel workers at the start of 1979, Rotterdam
dockworkers autumn 1979, steelworkers in Britain in 1980, Brazilian
metal workers, oil workers in Iran, massive workers’
movements in Peru, strikes across eastern Europe following the
mass strikes in Poland: all these struggles demonstrated the
combativity of the working class and a growing class
consciousness. The main significance of the mass strike in Poland
was that it provided the beginnings of an answer to the
fundamental questions posed in all the other struggles - how does
the working class fight and what are the basic obstacles it faces
in its struggle.

As
we have seen, during the summer of 1980 the Polish proletariat was
able to create, spontaneously, the most powerful and effective
forms of class struggle precisely because the social “buffers”
that exist in Western countries were lacking. This thoroughly
gives the lie to all those (Trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists, and
others) who claim that the working class cannot really develop its
struggles unless it has first formed trade unions or any other
kind of “workers’ associationism” (in the words of
the Bordigists of the International Communist Party that publishes
Il
Comunista in Italy). The
Polish proletariat’s moment of greatest strength, when it
paralysed the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state and
forced it to retreat, was when no trade union existed (the
official unions being completely out of the running). When the
union was formed, and as it bit by bit grew in strength and
structure, so the proletariat began to weaken to the point where
it was unable to react to the repression unleashed on 13th
December 1981. When the class struggle develops, the workers’
strength ielops, the workers’
strength is not proportional to that of the unions, but inversely
proportional. Any attempt to “renew” the old unions or
to create new ones, comes down to supporting the bourgeoisie in
its sabotage of the workers’ struggle.

This
is a fundamental lesson for the world proletariat from the
struggle in Poland 1980. however, the Polish workers themselves
were unable to understand the lesson because they did not have a
direct historical experience of union sabotage. A few months of
Solidarnosc sabotaging the struggle convinced them at best that
Walesa and his cronies were a bunch of bastards, but were not
enough to teach them that the problem is trade unionism, not this
or that “bad leader”.

These
lessons could only truly be learned by sectors of the world
proletariat who had already been confronted for a long time with
bourgeois democracy, not immediately from the Polish experience,
but from their own daily experience. In part, this is what
happened in the period that followed.

In
the international wave of struggles from 1983-89, particularly in
western Europe, where the working class has the longest experience
of ‘independent’ unions and the dictatorship of the
democratic bourgeoisie, workers struggles were led increasingly to
call into question the authority of the unions, to the point where
in a whole series of countries (France and Italy in particular)
“co-ordinations” were set up, supposedly springing from
“rank-and-file assemblies”, in order to make up for the
discredit of the official unions(1).
Obviously, this tendency to call into question the union framework
was strongly counter-acted by the general retreat of the working
class following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Stalinist
regimes in 1989. But in the struggles which will necessarily
develop in the future against the capitalist crisis, workers in
every country will have to recover the lessons of their previous
struggles. Not only the lessons of struggles that they have been
directly involved in, but also those of their class brothers in
other countries, and in particular those of the proletariat’s
struggle in Poland 1980.

For
we can be certain that the working class’ relative passivity
world wide today, does not call into question that general
historic course of the proletarian struggle. May 68 in France, the
Italian “hot autumn” of 1969, and may other movements
around the world since then have shown that the proletariat has
emerged from the counter-revolution that it suffered for 40
years(2).
This course has not fundamentally been called into question since
then: a historic period which has seen struggles as important as
those in Poland can only be called into question by a profound
defeat of the working class such as the bourgeoisie has so far
been unable to inflict.

Barrow

1
See in particular our article “The co-ordinations sabotage
the struggle” in International Review no.56

2
See our article “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown
capitalism” in this issue.